It’s Not Apartheid …

… and neither is it ethnic cleansing. Think about it, seriously. Apartheid is an Afrikaans word meaning ‘separateness’. In Apartheid South Africa it meant keeping the races apart in terms of ‘normal’ human interaction, except for those situations where the blacks were useful, chopping wood, washing up, digging gold… Apartheid is a kind of separate ‘togetherness’.

As for ethnic cleansing, that is about moving one ethnic group away from another. The ‘host’ effectively declares the unwanted race an interloper and tells it to get out.

Neither of these apply to Israel. Israel does not want Palestinians around as ‘hewers of wood and drawers of water’ and Israel doesn’t really want the Palestinians moved somewhere else as ‘refugees’, that, from their perspective, merely compounds the problem. Israel, driven as it is by Zionist ideology, needs the Palestinians to disappear, to cease to be, to never have been.

It’s simple. If there is a Palestinian – anywhere – it questions the validity of the ‘Jewish State of Israel’ (JSI). If there is a Palestinian history it questions the JSI story. Even were the Argentinians to provide a Palestinian State in their South it would prompt the questions, “Where are you from?”, “Why not there?”

And that too is why ‘genocide’ may be an inadequate word for what Zionism must strive for. Hitler discovered that simply moving people out of the way (further East) wasn’t enough, especially when that route was blocked. Zionism has discovered likewise that apartheid and ethnic cleansing don’t solve its ‘Palestinian Problem’. It is why its ‘christian Zionist’ supporters insist there is no such place as Palestine and no such person as a Palestinian.

That too is why Zionism must be seen for what, fundamentally, it is. If you steal someone’s land you are a thief; if you kill that person’s children you are a murderer; and if you do this – or support its doing – is the name of the Judeo-Christian God, you are a blasphemer and idolator.

So I’m searching for a word that truly describes the evil of Zionism – not, to be clear, ‘Zionists’, they are people. I believe them to be wrong, mistaken, tragically misled, capable of ‘messing up’, in fact, pretty normal. But their belief system is corrupt and corrupting, it will go to any length to attack and deny truth in support of its ideology and it will adopt and appropriate any other system, be it capitalism or socialism, to further its ends.

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2 Comments

Hi Dave,
you do know that Israel has accepted every compromise ever offered, and the Palestinians have rejected them. That Israel is a thriving democracy, with full civil rights for its Arab citizens, with Arab representatives in the Knesset, the High Court, etc.
So I wont discuss that part of your article.
I was however amazed at your idea that Israelis would be upset by Palestinians living elsewhere, like in South America. You do know that, according to IE, “Latin America is home to the largest Palestinian population outside the Arab world, numbering more than half a million.” What evidence do you have of Israeli ill-will towards these people?
Dave, you need to reconnect to the world of facts and history. You need the truth.
Colin

Dear Colin,
Let me start with your ‘amazement’ You totally miss the point. Zionism is happy for Palestinians to be anywhere else except Palestine but not as Palestinians, only as Arabs; and not as refugees because that raises the question, “refugee from what or whom?”. That is why Israel refused and refuses to allow the UNHCR to operate in Israel & the WB. Instead the UN was forced to create OCHA. It is you, Colin, who needs to connect with fact, history and truth, rather than to simply buy into Zionist PR.
Which leads me to your first paragraph. The notion that Israel is a thriving democracy is laughable, as is the idea that Arabs have full civil rights. Arab MK’s may not challenge Israel’s behaviour in the Knesset except under threat of a charge of treason. If you think they are treated equally how is it that the eduation capitation for an Arab child is around 20% that of a Jewish child. How come Israeli Jews can get planning premission, (often post facto), water, electricity and protection, while Arab children are denied protectionfrom settler attacks on their way to school? And over 4 million people don’t get to vote for the people who have effective control of their lives. Their water is stolen, their trees are destroyed, their children are intimidated and imprisoned.
So to you very first point, ‘Israel has accepted every compromise ever offered’. I don’t know what you read but you really do need to undertake better, more questioning research. I’ve no intention of defending Arafat or his counsellors. He and they may have been the best that Israel had left them. Israel has never offered a single compromise offer. The Camp David 2000 Summit is usually used by pro-zionists to present Arafat as the problem. The truth is that the ‘offer’ was almost certainly not on the table, a suggestion by a negotiator that enabled Israel to appear to take the high ground. The fact is the offer was never fully detailed and would certainly seen Barak’s coalition government fall apart had he tried to implement it. Dismantling settlements has never been easy. The Palestinians had to reject an ‘offer’ that would have exchanged desertified land near Gaza, for good agricultural land in WB. Explicitly, the WB would have been split into at least 3 ‘cantons’ with Israel controlling land access, airspace, water nd the economy. Hardly the basis for a nation state.
That, Colin, is history, it is truth. The sooner we Christians realise the threat Zionism poses to the Gospel, the better.